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Publishing

The Leap: How 3 Simple Changes Can Propel Your Career from Good to Great by: Rick Smith

Book History Rick co-authored the Wall Street Journal bestselling book The Five Patterns of Extraordinary Careers in 2003. After a five year break, Rick ventured into writing a book solo, and sold the manuscript of The Leap to Portfolio in 2008. As is traditionally the case, publishers expect second books to do better than first books. Rick hired RSI to guarantee this success.

Execution RSI engaged with the author to help develop his brand across several online platforms- a new blog site, book website, Facebook page, Twitter page, promotional video shoots, etc. The next task was to push as many people to those platforms as possible. Whether through drip email campaigns, blogger outreach, mailings of advanced reader copies to hundreds for reviews or interviews – RSI put Rick, his book and his Primary Color Assessment test in front of the eyes of hundreds of thousands, in order to drive book-sales.

Results The first week out of the gate, the book ranked as a Wall Street Journal bestseller. A customized Amazon campaign placed the book at #3 in overall books and #1 on the Business Bestseller list for several days in a row.

Mark Coker, Founder of Smashwords, the world’s largest indie book distributor, gave a great talk at the excellent Edinburgh Publishing Conference on the key trends driving the future of the book publishing industry.

1. The rise of ebooks.

2. Book selling (print and ebooks) is moving to the web

3. Democratisation of Publishing

4. The self-published are gaining a competitive advantage

5. Book buyers are price sensitive

6. Print is dead for most self-published authors

7. Ebooks are going global

8. Big publishers are getting into self-publishing

9. Previous stigma of self-publishing is disappearing

Mark believes that there has never been a better time to be in publishing. The world needs more smart people in publishing adding value to books. The question of indie/traditional publishing tends to be framed as an either/or battle but it doesn’t need to be.